Dear Isabelle:

I very much agree with Noor’s intelligent, insightful and wise replies to you.

Welcome back, Isabelle. It’s been over two months since we last communicated. I just read much of our previous communication.

“I have decided to give it a chance and agreed to see him again.. Am I right in wanting to pursue this?”- reads to me that he’s been honest with you so far, and that he is a decent man for caring to not explore a relationship with you at your expense (his words).

You wrote about this very new, 2-date relationship: “It could also allow me to learn to develop relationships in a slower, more healthy way. I have tended to rush into things very quickly in the past.. I am also a very intense and passionate person and can easily get carried away and throw all caution out the window when infatuated with someone… I tend to rush into things.. It is difficult for me to be laid back at the beginning of a relationship”-

– connecting our previous communication to the paragraph above, I think that the rushing you mentioned has a lot to do with your lifetime anxiety: “I have lived with anxiety since a very young age. Around 5, I started having violent migraines that would make me throw up. I also had night terrors. I have had periods where things were better, but it never lasts”.

Seems to me that your emotional experience as a child was that of ongoing anxiety that was interrupted occasionally with the greatest, most heavenly feeling in the world, and that was how you felt when you made your mother happy. You referred to this feeling as a healing feeling: “The healing that I am referring to is the warm feeling that I experienced when I make my mom happy”.

I think that you experience new romantic relationships (take out the sexual part) similar to the way you experienced your relationship with your mother: very anxiously rushing toward that heavenly feeling.

The more anxious we people are, the more we crave euphoria and we rush to get it. Problem is that this healing-feeling is not equal to healing, it only feels like it, and a feeling does not last. If it was truly healing, it would have lasted: “I have had periods where things were better, but it never lasts”.

Heal from your anxiety best you can, every day by gaining more insight into your mind and heart, and practically slowing down/ practicing mindfulness: being aware of and focusing on the here-and-now.

anita

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